As many of the young boys and girls in our parish make their First Communion today, the Gospel reading for this Sunday tells us the powerful story of the very first Holy Communion to take place after Jesus rose from the dead. The story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus shows us the importance of the Eucharist in the life of the Church. In this story we hear that on the very day that Jesus rose from the dead, the first day of the week, that day being a Sunday, Jesus Himself celebrated the Eucharist with His disciples. It was only in His doing this that these two people, who had known Jesus personally in life, were able to recognize Him and see Him present in their lives. This story tells us a great deal about what it means to be Christians and the place that the Eucharist is to have in the life of each Christian.

We live at a time when many people believe that what it means to be a Christian is to be a nice person. I often hear people say: “I do not go to Mass, but I never hurt anyone.” These are words that could just as easily be spoken by any good Jewish person, a Buddhist or a person who does not believe in God. Today’s Gospel calls us to understand that what it means to be a Christian is to be a person who believes that Jesus rose from the dead and to celebrate the Eucharist as the memorial of the New Covenant that He established for us at the Last Supper. A few short weeks ago we celebrated Holy Thursday. On this evening, we recounted the fact that Jesus gave the Eucharist to His disciples as a way for them to remember Him. On that night, He gave them the very explicit command, “Do this in memory of me.” As today’s Gospel shows us, in order that His disciples understand the place that the Eucharist is to have in the life of the Christian, the first thing that Jesus does with them after His resurrection is celebrate the Eucharist.  On the Sunday that Jesus rose from the dead, He Himself appeared in their midst, explained the scriptures to them and broke bread with them. From this example, He wishes to remind all of us that it is in celebrating the Eucharist that He gave us that we celebrate and deepen in our Christian faith.

This Sunday’s Gospel also shows us another important aspect about what it means to be a Christian. Christ appears to His disciples and celebrates the Eucharist on the first day of the week—that is on Sunday. Throughout all of His resurrection appearances that we hear about in the Gospels of this Easter season, Jesus is always appearing on the first day of the week. Because our own work week begins on Monday, some of us can think that Monday is the first day of the week. We can forget that for the Jewish people, Saturday was the seventh day of the week on which God rested after creating the world.  Sunday is the first day of the week. For Christians, Sunday is important because it is the first day of the week on which Jesus rose from the dead and recreated the world through His resurrection. As this Gospel shows us, to be a Christian means that we are members of a Sunday people—a people that gathers to celebrate the resurrection on the day that Jesus rose from the dead.

In the early Church there were three things that made a person a Christian. These were Baptism, the observance of Sunday and the Eucharist. All three of these things are connected to Easter. In Baptism, Christ invites us to share in His death and resurrection, forgives our sins, and shares with us the gift of His Holy Spirit. Every Sunday is intended to be a little Easter when those who claim to believe in the resurrection come together to celebrate Christ’s victory over death. Sunday is the day on which we who hope to spend eternity with Christ express our desire to be with Him forever in Heaven by spending an hour to listen to His Word and receive Him in the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, Christians remember Christ’s Easter victory every week by keeping His command to “do this in memory of me,” on the day that Jesus rose from the dead, which was Sunday. The Gospel today makes it very clear that the early Church was quite correct in its understanding that the definition of what it means to be a Christian is quite simple. A Christian is a person who accepts Jesus as his or her Saviour and believes that He rose from the dead to save us from our sins and won for us eternal life. Christians express their belief in Christ by celebrating the Eucharist as the memorial of His resurrection on Sunday as He has commanded us to do in memory of Him.

One of the reasons why this weekly celebration of the Eucharist is so important is also made clear in today’s Gospel story. We hear in this Gospel how it was that two of Jesus’ very close friends failed to recognize him just a few days after He had died. The journey that they are on to Emmaus is symbolic of the journey that each one of us is on in life. Like the disciples who are caught up in the sadness of having lost a friend, so too in our own lives, challenges and difficulties can prevent us from seeing Christ as He walks at our side. These disciples expected that because they were friends of Jesus, they would be saved from their problems. Because of their false expectations, Jesus says to them, “how foolish you are,” and explains to them what the scriptures meant when they said that the Saviour would come to be “with them” through their problems and save them from final death. Only after Jesus explains the scriptures to them and breaks the bread with them do they recognize Him. In our own lives, we too need to hear explained over and over again God’s Word and must encounter Him repeatedly in the Eucharist in order to recognize Christ’s presence in the midst of our struggles and difficulties. Just as we never tell someone that we love them only once, so too in the Eucharist Christ speaks to us of His love and presence in our lives over and over again. In order that we might understand fully the significance of Christ’s loving presence in our lives, He invites us each Sunday to celebrate the memorial of His resurrection that He has commanded us to do in memory of Him.

The workbook that the young people use to prepare for First Communion is called We Share in the Eucharist. It very beautifully speaks about all of the themes that we find in today’s Gospel reading. The book begins by talking about baptism and the journey that we are all on towards Heaven. On this journey, Jesus wishes to travel with us, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, as a friend. Because of His love and friendship for us, He gives us the Eucharist as a way of remembering that He has died and risen so that we may have eternal life. Jesus loves each of us so much that He does not want to be with us only in Heaven. He desires to be with us now and invites us to show our desire to be with Him in Heaven by celebrating the Eucharist with Him from Sunday to Sunday. At each Sunday Mass, we listen to Christ’s Word and receive His Body and Blood so that we might know that He is always with us. Because of the Eucharist, Jesus wishes to be as close to us today as He was to His first disciples and friends. It is a beautiful things that as our young girls and boys make their First Communion today, we hear the story of the First Holy Communion that was ever celebrated in the Church after Jesus’ resurrection.

The story of this very First Communion that we hear about in today’s Gospel story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus reminds us of the importance of the Eucharist in the life of every Christian. In the Eucharist, Christ comes to be with each of us. Because it is Christ who comes to us in the Eucharist, it is impossible to be a Christian without the Eucharist. This is why Christ Himself says in the Gospel of John: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have life in you” (John 6:53). Just as the story of this first Eucharist marked a beginning of a weakly celebration of the Eucharist for Christ’s disciples on the way to Emmaus, let us pray that as these young people make their First Communion today, it too will mark the beginning of their lifelong celebration of the weekly Sunday Eucharist. There is a reason why we call it “First Communion. We never say “First Baptism” or “First Confirmation” for those sacraments that are not repeated. We call first only those sacraments that are to be repeated regularly, like “First Communion” or First Confession.” Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus who recognized Christ as they made their First Communion after the resurrection, may the young people who make their First Communion today always know that God is with them as a result of their weekly celebration of the memorial that He has commanded us to do in memory of Him. Let us also pray that those of us here today who have already made our First Communion may be renewed in our own understanding of the importance of the Eucharist in our faith lives by the example of the young people making their First Communion today and the beautiful story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, from chapter 24 of Luke’s Gospel, that we hear proclaimed at Mass today.

Congratulations to all the young people making their First Communion this weekend.

Fr. Michael McGourty
Pastor—St. Peter’s Church—Toronto.